Vancouver Island Circumnavigation 1984

This is old stuff! In 1984, I sailed solo around Vancouver Island in 4-1/2 weeks. I took lots of slides that have set neglected for years. Last winter, I scanned the slides and put them in a movie format. I have been downloading some of my movies to YouTube, but they set a 15 minute limit on my downloads. Last week, YouTube must have decided I that I am a respectable person and have allowed me to download larger videos. So I finally was able to down load this video for all to see. I have another video of a 1988 cruise to the Queen Charlotte Islands and again around Vancouver Island. I need to confirm that it is a format that can be downloaded and then interested people can view it.

In 1984, I sailed around Vancouver Island. From Bremerton the total distance was just over 800 nautical miles. In that day, this was considered a extreme voyage. We did not have affordable or available electronic navigation aids. GPS had not even been invented! The most sophisticated device I had onboard was a radio direction finder(RDF), it was of limited use on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Fog? I navigated by dead reckoning.

I left Bremerton in the middle of June and worked my way north and west to the north end of the island. After getting caught in a storm off Cape Scott and blowing out a sail, I retreated to remote Bull Harbor for a couple of days to repair damage.

After setting out again, I worked down the coast. Many cool adventures occurred in some remote areas of the pacific northwest. Highlights? Probably Hot Springs Cove was certainly one of the most memorable stops as was the several days spent in Barkley Sound. I can not imagine traveling down this coast without making many stops.

After this trip, I returned in 1988. That trip was much longer as I sailed first to the Queen Charlotte Islands before sailing overnight to the west coast of Vancouver Island. Then again in 2011, I again sailed around Vancouver Island. This was a race though and we did not stop on the west coast.